This Content Is Only For Subscribers
It was bound to happen. Worn out by over 15 days spent grinding in the sacred and terribly boring 14th arrondissement of Paris, I firmly grasped my Uber and made my way to the holy land of Oberkampf. Bastille, becoming increasingly tacky, and Belleville, perhaps too affected by the strikes, led me to believe that Oberkampf would be the perfect place to break free from the vicious cycle of “wake up, work, sleep” in which I had miserably trapped myself for weeks. But as fate would have it, I ended up at Café des Anges in Bastille. Barely seated, S.E joined me…
Oh, I forgot to mention that the taxi ride there cost me 30 euros and some change. I wonder what I disliked more, the awkward and repetitive conversations about the unfair competition from Ubers, or the fact that the driver seemed slightly offended when I didn’t tip him. Despite his insistence that he prefers doing many short trips, transportation ended up costing me more than the evening itself…
So S.E joined me. Well, he walked past me without recognizing me, dressed all in black, unaware of my presence. Then he circled around the bar with his phone, which amused me greatly when I finally called him. The first statement he uttered was quite significant: “There are too many f***ing idiots signing.” I didn’t quite understand the remark. I thought to myself that he must be drunk. As I looked at him more closely and caught a whiff of his breath, my doubts turned into certainties. He oscillated between senseless aggression and nonsensical phrases. S.E, who is a writer in his spare time, spoke as if he were in a PNL song: a trippy conversation where the beginnings meet the endings in a lunar and somewhat incomprehensible blend. We ordered a whiskey and a beer. While S.E continued his monologue on the theme of “Only idiots sign,” somewhat in the style of Béné, I decided to break the tense atmosphere and asked him to meet me on Rue De La Lappe.
We went to the little French San Sebastian on Rue de Lappe. And there, I found a bar with a football match. SE went to the restroom. I ordered another whisky. When he came back, he walked past the bar, forgot his beer, and went outside to look for me. He stayed outside for 5 minutes, then came back while the bartender was waving at him. After fifteen minutes, SE found me again. That’s when he remembered his drink. The waitress brought it to him. He rolled a joint at the bar, reminiscing about our lost hours in Amsterdam. He went out twice to smoke it. By that point, he was completely unable to speak. Then, like a modern-day Gargantua, he sniffed and greedily gulped down his beer before saying goodbye and leaving. Meanwhile, I was watching the Manchester City – Leicester match. I thought to myself that I only watched football when I was bored. The waitress came to me and asked if I wasn’t going to pay for SE’s drink, which he had abandoned. Well, I paid with a heavy heart.
I looked for a taxi, then an Uber, then a taxi again. I walked for 30 minutes and returned to the starting point with a sense of accomplishment. Sometimes in life, to mention just one sketch from Les Inconnus, you have to know how to lose.
